This piece was published days ago and has been up on the internet but largely passed without notice, much less comment link here. I found it valuable as another case where a major innovation took place without IP--no copyright and no patents. It occurred at its own pace, driven by the intellectual interest and dreams of a number of people, cooperating informally to bring about the Internet. Read it and remember, the next time you hear that little innovation would take place without IP.

The French Parliament has rejected the bill, proposed by the Sarkozy's government, that would have lead to the cut of the internet connection for "individuals" (IP numbers? Internet provider's accounts? Not clear ...) "caught" using peer-to-peer software to download copyrighted files. The bill had been approved by the Senate in the morning and this seems to be just a temporary stall. The bill will go back to the Senate, which will change one comma, and then will be re-submitted to the Parliament on April 29th ...

The Sarkozy's government needs the support of actors, singers and other "artists" in the forthcoming elections for the European Parliament: "artists" being traditionally on the left, this would help the poor right-wing husband of a struggling leftist artist to win the elections.

For those very same reasons the Prime Minister of Spain, Luis Zapatero, reshuffled his own government last week, appointing Mrs. Ángeles González-Sinde to the post of Minister of Culture (yes, they have that in Spain, and in France, and Italy ...). Her previous job was being the President of the Spanish lobby for the movie industry (the official name is way more pompous), the founder of which was her ... father.

In Spain, as in France, Italy and all over Europe, local "artists" are very active on the anti-freedom of downloading campaign, attributing the bad economic performances of the European (respectively, Spanish, French, ...) movie industry to the use of P2P software and downloading. As everyone knows, before P2P appeared the European movie industries were thriving and their movies were dominanting the world market.

(from Akin at Irdial...I think I'll just reproduce the email he got...)

Dear Irdial-Discs,

We have removed your document "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" because our text matching system determined that it was very similar to a work that has been marked as copyrighted and not permitted on Scribd.

Like all automated matching systems, our system is not perfect and occasionally makes mistakes. If you believe that your document is not infringing, please contact us at copyright@scribd.com and we will investigate the matter.

As stated in our terms of use, repeated incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your Scribd.com account and prohibit you from uploading material to Scribd.com in the future. To prevent us from having to take these steps, please delete from scribd.com any material you have uploaded to which you do not own the necessary rights and refrain from uploading any material you are not entitled to upload. For more information about Scribd.com's copyright policy, please read the Terms of Use located at http://www.scribd.com/terms

Jason Bentley

Directory of Community Development

jason@scribd.com

For the record Adam Smith died in 1790 and nothing he wrote is currently under copyright any where in the world.

OTI.com aggregates information about IP from a variety of sources (including this blog)...if you want to keep tabs on IP news, it is a good place to look.

(via Steve Silberstein) One of the reason the patent system does not work more poorly than it does is that companies acquire large portfolios of patents that they hold over each others head, effectively neutralizing the patent system and letting everyone get on with the business of actually inventing useful stuff. The "patent trolls" or non-practicing entities (NPEs) have broken this system by creating firms that don't actually do anything except hold patents, so they are free to sue, without any threat of being counter sued. Patent Freedom is a web site devoted to tracking the trolls - they have a wealth of interesting information about them.

You may have heard that an international treaty that would make serious revisions to copyright enforcement and penalties is being negotiated secretly by the Obama administration. Organizations that have tried to obtain documents and related information under the freedom of information act have been denied on account of "national security" although every pro-copyright lobbyist is apparently allowed to participate. Stephan gives a link to a nice video report discussing the matter link here.

Details here.

Monster's abuse is particularly galling in light of the fact that their product is vastly overpriced and no better than any other (far less expensive) cables used to hook up electronic components.

Great review of Against Intellectual Monopoly by the powerhouse libertarian reviewer, David Gordon, in the recent issue of Mises Review.

President Obama reportedly gave an iPod, loaded with 40 show tunes, to England's Queen Elizabeth II as a gift. Did he violate copyright laws when he did so?

Read here for a great analysis.

Steve Silberstein writes in with some reading suggestions

James Bessen and Michael Meurer "Patent failure : how judges, bureaucrats and lawyers put innovaters at risk" - I've read this, and contains a lot of useful information and careful analysis. I saw the authors at a conference yesterday...I have given them a hard time about their conclusion. Roughly they document how thoroughly broken and useless the patent system is and then conclude that we should tweak it a little bit...

Three more books I haven't read: "Copyrights and Copywrongs" by Siva Raidyanathan "Not so patently obvious" by Eric Stasik "Copyrights Paradox" by Neil Weinstock Netanel

Opinions welcome; if you've read one why not post a comment?